New Forest Ponies 69 



crofters to register their brood mares. They fail to recognize the 

 benefit derived and do recognize that the fee has to be paid. The 

 Government grant for stallions renders it incumbent that the mares 

 should be registered, and an indirect benefit is rendered to the 

 breed. Highland ponies have been sent to the United States and 

 to Australia, of course for the purpose of crossing, and it is possible 

 thg,t a regular if a small trade may spring up in course of time. 



New Forest Ponies 



{Plate, facing f. 14s) 



With much in common with their neighbours, and perhaps 

 relatives, the New Forest ponies have had a more varied history. 

 Lord Arthur Cecil, than whom there is no more reliable authority 

 on ponies and pony breeding, says that it is very difficult to come 

 across a really typical New Forest pony, even in the Forest, and 

 this is not so difficult to understand when the history of the breed 

 is considered. 



The history of the breed is intimately connected with a Royal 

 Forest, and with a Royal Forest in which there are, and have 

 been from time immemorial, rights of common. The New Forest 

 with its common rights was a Royal Forest in the reign of King 

 Canute — close on nine hundred years ago — and it is within the 

 range of probability that ponies were commonable animals in the 

 time of Canute, or possibly earlier. We know that William the 

 Conqueror tried to abolish these common rights in the New Forest 

 and that he failed utterly, as indeed did all subsequent attempts of 

 the kind; but it is impossible that the conditions under which the 

 ponies were bred should not have had considerable influence on the 

 breed. It has been suggested by Lord Arthur Cecil that it is pos- 

 sible that some attempt was made to improve the breed even so 

 early as the reign of Canute; and it is highly probable that there 

 have been introductions of other blood, from time to time, of which 

 even tradition is silent. But little is really known of the old com- 

 moners and their relations with their overlords, and the little that 

 is known is confined to fines and taxes and disputes. Nothing, so 

 far as I am aware, is known about the ponies or other stock they 

 bred, till King Henry VHI, alarmed at the shortage of horses in 

 the country, which he viewed with a more statesmanlike eye than 

 the subject commands in modern times, began to consider the 

 question of horse breeding from a national standpoint. In his 

 time the ponies in the Forest were very closely looked after, and 

 no stallion under 14 hands 2 in. was permitted to roam within its 



